In one word, it must always be foul
to tell what is false; and it can never be safe to suppress
what is true. The very fact that you omit may be the fact
which somebody was wanting, for one man's meat is another
man's poison, and I have known a person who was cheered by
the perusal of CANDIDE. Every fact is a part of that great
puzzle we must set together; and none that comes directly in
a writer's path but has some nice relations, unperceivable by
him, to the totality and bearing of the subject under hand.
Yet there are certain classes of fact eternally more
necessary than others, and it is with these that literature
must first bestir itself. They are not hard to distinguish,
nature once more easily leading us; for the necessary,
because the efficacious, facts are those which are most
interesting to the natural mind of man. Those which are
coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted in morality, and
those, on the other hand, which are clear, indisputable, and
a part of science, are alone vital in importance, seizing by
their interest, or useful to communicate. So far as the
writer merely narrates, he should principally tell of these.
He should tell of the kind and wholesome and beautiful
elements of our life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil
and sorrow of the present, to move us with instances: he
should tell of wise and good people in the past, to excite us
by example; and of these he should tell soberly and
truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may neither grow
discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our neighbours.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49